How We Got Started

Our story begun one hot summer night in Pretoria during December 2000. My wife, Julie had a dream, woke me up and took me outside at 04h00 in the morning to show me our front yard. Whilst pointing a finger at the front yard she said: “I know you are a farmer at heart. Use this ground for something.” The front yard consisted of two pieces of lawn separated by the entrance motor pathway. On the fringes of the lawn were planted Karee and Lilac trees. The size of the two pieces of lawn together was 155 square meters or 1.5% of a hectare.

We got married in 1999 and during that same year I have lost my job. For both of us it was a second marriage. By December, after also losing my mother in November 2000, we were still trying to find our feet and financially really struggling. We were invited to visit friends of Julie that were farming in the Parys District. On our way there and stopping underneath some Blue Gum Trees to take a rest, I looked at the agricultural fields around me. The word garlic came into my head. At the time I knew nothing about garlic farming or planting. The next morning whilst on the toilet, there were agricultural magazines available and my eye caught an advert which stated “Grow Garlic High Returns”. I cut this advert out of the magazine and kept it.

After that weekend in December I started my research process. We also started selling some old equipment and stuff to have money available to buy the seed. The preparation of the ground was another challenge and we had to cut the trees in order to have enough sunlight available. Garlic just love sunlight! I also stopped an old man travelling daily past our house on a tractor and requested whether he would be willing to assist me to plough our front yard. He gladly agreed and did not even charge me a cent to do it. I still up to today, have gratitude for this gesture.

We paid, on 18 January 2001, R 4 500 for our first 4000 garlic cloves to plant. Our first harvest was extremely successful and we sold at the end of 2001 a portion of our harvest to have finances available to continue with the project. By the end of 2003 we had 40 000 cloves available to plant.  It was truly a small and humble beginning of our garlic business which today is registered as a full-blown family business, Garlic Farmers SA.

Core Values

START SMALL, GROW FAST